In recent days, people prefer to hear event/programs in their native language either while watching the public events like indoor area for housing dramatic presentations, stage entertainments, surgical demonstrations or motion-picture. People always look for translators or subtitles in events and programs to comprehend the foreign language. There is a need for a system to translate audio output of any audible program to a user's native language in a fast, easy, reliable and cost effective manner. Also, there is a need for a phonetic language translation system that may substitute interpreters and subtitles.
A number of hand-held language translators are available in the market, capable of translating an audible speech only to a specific set of languages. This predetermined set is a combination of popular languages spoken in the world. But, there are more than 6,700 native languages being used in the world. People are forced to buy multiple language translators to cover a broader range of language translation. There is not a single system capable of performing audible speech translation from any of the 6,700 native languages to any of the other languages spoken in the world.
In today's language translators, the user always has a need to select their native languages as target language. If translators are unavailable for their native languages they have to settle for a translator that has the closet language they are familiar with as target language. But in settling for secondary target language translators there is a possibility that users may experience loss in understanding some of the translations. This can happen because of cross cultural differences.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/543,054, filed Aug. 18, 2009, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/563,123, filed Sep. 19, 2009, assigned to the same assignee as the instant application, incorporated herein by reference.
The following U.S. patents are hereby incorporated by reference for their teaching of language translation systems and methods: U.S. Pat. No. 6,356,865, issued to Franz et al., entitled “Method and system for performing spoken language translation”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,758,023, issued to Bordeaux, entitled “Multi-language speech recognition system”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,584, issued to Brown et al., entitled “Speech recognition system for natural language translation”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,892, issued to Tanaka et al., entitled “Translation apparatus and method for facilitating speech input operation and obtaining correct translation thereof”; U.S. Pat. No. 7,162,412, issued to Yamada et al., entitled “Multilingual conversation assist system”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,917,920, issued to Koizumi et al., entitled “Speech translation device and computer readable medium”; U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,177/issued to Rondel et al., entitled “Voice language translators; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,507,750, issued to Frantz et al., entitled “Electronic apparatus from a host language”.
According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,301 issued to Rivers et al., entitled “Automated Language Translation System”, each sentence is translated into a universal language and then the sentences are translated from universal language to the preferred language of the user as identified by the user. Such a system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,301, is capable of translating an audible speech only to a specific set of native languages. This predetermined set is a combination of popular native languages spoken in the world. But, there are more than 6,700 native languages being used in the world. Such a system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,301 is not capable of performing language translation for audio speech in any of the 6,700 native languages to any of the other languages spoken in the world.
Although there have been many advances in system and software for providing phonetic language translation for users who are interested to hear an audible program in a language other than their native language; there has not been an system or method that facilitate to identify user's native language using language area of brain of user and use the identified native language for translation. Accordingly, the present inventor has developed a system that can identify the native language of user by his/her brain language area as target language for audio speech translation.